I note that they say tor button is no longer supported as an add on for Firefox (though it's working fine here in Iceweasel but you can download their build of the tor browser bundle which comes pre-configured.

You can use the self-contained Tor Browser Bundle as an alternative. Just extract, and running it will give you Firefox connected to Tor. I managed to get Tor working in the past, without the Tor Browser Bundle, and IIRC I indeed had to setup Privoxy as a local proxy between Firefox and Tor.

I installed Tor in LMDE as specified on the Tor website and it works well with Iceweasel.

I have tried the bundle using ./start-tor-browser but it never starts only gives and error message, or opens in gedit.

I can get the tor bundle to work in some other distributions by just double clicking on the start-tor-bundle script and I was using Ubuntu 10.04 last night and after doing updates, and installing some extra software, I found that I could double click on the start-tor-browser bundle script, and other scripts and they worked. Have no idea what software I installed that allows this to happen but wish I did.

In LMDE I have noticed using Vidalia gives same error as shown above but when opening Iceweasel, set to use Tor, it goes to the check.tor page and shows that Tor is active and working but it doesn't show up in Task Manager. This must mean that Tor is constantly running as a hidden service. Does anyone know how to stop it when not required?

I also use Privoxy, I like the option to turn TOR on and off easily in Firefox. I do occasionally use TOR desktop wide, but only rarely. There are some excellent proxy services out there, and easily set up, but they are all pay services. I find I do not have such a need for proxies that paying for one would be an option however.

Myself wrote:In LMDE I have noticed using Vidalia gives same error as shown above but when opening Iceweasel, set to use Tor, it goes to the check.tor page and shows that Tor is active and working but it doesn't show up in Task Manager. This must mean that Tor is constantly running as a hidden service. Does anyone know how to stop it when not required?

TBH, you don't really want to go start-for-browser. Vidalia has its own Stop button for Tor, and this is the kind of thing that Vidalia is for. It's a GUI for Tor, nothing more, and is the reason it's bundled with Tor:

Is this something I should worry about ?How do I 'Consider using Socks4A (e.g. via privoxy or socat) instead.' ?

For future reference, in this case Tor is not running in Firefox. You need to check Socks 4. Tor/Vidalia will not work with Socks 5.

tor work prefectly on socks5 just edit your browser to use remote dns about:config then lookup for "proxy remote dns" to enable it,i think this step not have much security concern,correct me if i wrong.